Student project blog exploring the themes of anxiety and how it can be understood and portrayed through symbolism.
Semester 2 project at Duncan and Jordanstone college of art.

Friday, 25 January 2013

Brief

Level 2 Art and Media

Time based art and digital film

Tutor:Gair Dunlop

Location: TBADF studio (Matthew L5) and facilities

Personal Brief

Title: “Symbolic stages of Anxiety”

“Symbolists
believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described
indirectly. Thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner,
endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning.”

Concept:

This project will be exploring the themes of anxieties and
how they can be viewed in a symbolic manner. How the themes affect the human
form internally and externally either it being through emotions and body
language. How we express ourselves as individuals and to the world around us
and how it changes us and its effects on us in positive and negative ways. How
symbols in imagery can have deeper meanings of the unconscious and suppressed
fears.

Aims:

The aim is to make visual representations of human anxieties
with symbolism that will explore this theme in an attempt to understand the
human unconscious. To create pieces using these themes through the use of props
for the symbols and the human form to represent different types of anxieties.

That the viewer can emphasise with the anxieties and the
pieces can communicate with emotions in the viewer and of the unconscious. That
the visuals would help them understand or relate in ways they find difficult to
respond or connect with individuals that suffer from fears and anxieties or in
themselves.

That they may have a loved one or friend who goes through this
type of trauma and find it difficult to communicate or help them. But hoping my
pieces could help with that in ways to show the person who is affected and
those around them visually what they are going through. To better understand
the human unconscious and what causes anxieties to affect us in our daily
lives.

I would like to explore this theme through the media’s of
photography and installation with props to express different forms of symbolism
and emotions. This may be done with the mood and tone of photograph’s lighting
to strong visuals such as colour and body language. That will symbolise and
create the types of different emotions and fears we have or perceive to have
created by our own thoughts.